The London School of Economics and Political Science. A Critique of Pure Public Reason. Esha Senchaudhuri

Transcription

1 The London School of Economics and Political Science A Critique of Pure Public Reason Esha Senchaudhuri A thesis submitted to the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method of the London School of Economics for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, London, December 2,

2 Declaration I certify that the thesis I have presented for examination for the MPhil/PhD degree of the London School of Economics and Political Science is solely my own work other than where I have clearly indicated that it is the work of others (in which case the extent of any work carried out jointly by me and any other person is clearly identified in it). The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. This thesis may not be reproduced without my prior written consent. I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of any third party. I declare that my thesis consists of 85,860 words. 2

3 Abstract Contemporary political liberalism defends the view that any legitimate law ought to be justified to those reasonable citizens subject to it. A standard way in which to accomplish this task is to construct a set of public reasons, comprised of constitutional essentials and public democratic values, which are then used to justify all political mandates. The dissertation begins with a criticism of this process of justification for outcomes of legitimate procedures of public decision-making. It argues that given how reasons contribute to judgment formation, it is highly optimistic to assume that reasonable consent on procedures of collective decision-making correspond to the justifiability of procedural outcomes. Instead, I argue for an ideal of legitimate decision-making which enables each citizen to assume a threshold level of personal responsibility for all political decisions made by the political collective. Integrating responsibility into a theory of liberal legitimacy requires a reformulation of the rules of public justification. I argue that citizens concerned with making responsible political decisions must be allowed to justify their political positions through both reasonable judgments as well as sympathetic judgments such as compassion for those who live with disability and mercy towards the criminally motivated. The notion of sympathy, as formulated by David Hume and expanded by Adam Smith, provides an account of how individuals ethical evaluations are affected by their ability to be in fellow-feeling with other people. A substantial portion of my doctoral thesis considers the situations in which a private judgment couched in sympathetic terms can meet political liberalism s demands of publicity and reciprocity. 3

4 Table of Contents Dedication and Acknowledgements... 6 Introduction : The Moral Foundations of Pure Public Reason : An Overview of the Argument of the Dissertation Chapter 1: Legitimacy and Responsibility : Taxonomies of Responsibility : Argument for Personal Responsibility : The Problem of Conscience Chapter 2: A Critique of Procedural Legitimacy : Political and Procedural Legitimacy : The Legal Obligation to Obey the Law : Procedural Legitimacy and Justification Perfect and Imperfect Procedures of Justice Fairness burdens of judgment, the strength of a pro tanto obligation : Conclusion Chapter 3: Sympathy and Liberalism : Adam Smith s Theory of Sympathy : Smith and Rawls Justice Impartiality Objection from Impartiality : The Problem of Equal Status : Conclusion Chapter 4: Sympathy & Publicity : Overview of the Argument for Sympathetic Public Reason : The Structure of Justification for Empathetic Judgments : Rawlsian Publicity : The Publicity of Sympathetic Justification : Failures of Publicity : Introducing Failures of Publicity

5 4.5.2: Emotions Failures of Judgments : Unreasonable Attitudes : Faulty Imagination : Conclusion Chapter 5: Sympathy and Reciprocity : Reciprocity in Liberalism : Sympathy and Respect : Justification of the Duty of Deliberative Sympathy : Justification of the Duty of Respectful Political Equality : Conclusion Chapter 6: The Problem of Conscience Revisited : Sympathy and Abortion : Weighing Reasons and The Hijab Controversy : Pacificism and Humanitarian Wars : Individual Liberty vs. Collective Participation : Conclusion Bibliography

6 Dedication and Acknowledgements When I decided to leave my job to pursue graduate studies, one of my colleagues conveyed to me the echoes of a once popular New England blessing: May Reason always be your Guide, and never your Tyrant. In the years that followed, such a blessing took on special significance. Reason became a guide, a sparring partner, a muse and even a tease. It played the dual role of agitator and illuminator in every project I pursued. It kept me up several nights; it kept me inside on bright days. Despite its demands, however, it never became the tyrant that I supposed it would be. I have several people to thank for this alone: First and foremost I would like to thank my parents, who have never failed in their support, their understanding, their generosity and their encouragement. I have only this dissertation to offer to them, but I dedicate it to them with eternal love and gratitude. Secondly, I would like to thank Susan Powell and Ed Ross for their kindness and hospitality throughout the years. I benefited immensely from Susan s willingness to share the wisdom and anecdotes that came from decades of supervising LSE doctoral students, and thank her for the time she took guiding me through the emotional ups and downs of doing a PhD. Third, I would like to thank my supervisors Alex Voorhoeve and Chandran Kukathas, for all their help and guidance. The level of detailed feedback Alex gave me on my work over the years was incredibly helpful in transforming my ideas from forceful convictions to defensible arguments. I am also grateful to him for introducing me to the moral theory of Adam Smith, which has become one of my foremost philosophical interests. Chandran s willingness to share his vast knowledge of political theory, legal theory and moral theory made supervisions with him incredible learning experiences, and some of the most fun I have ever had while doing philosophy. Through discussions with him, I became far more aware of the evolution of political 6

7 ideas and the connections between scholarly traditions. He made me see that contemporary liberalism is a part of a much larger tradition of political philosophy, and reassured me that one could do focused work while reading not just widely but incredibly widely. Lastly, I would like to thank Yash Senchaudhuri for his patience with me and all my books, spread everywhere, over everything, Ekua Ewool and Zsu Chappell for their friendly encouragement, and all my fellow students at the LSE Philosophy and Political Theory Departments for their friendship, support and cheerful commiseration over the years. 7

8 Introduction You all did love him once, not without cause; What cause withholds you then to mourn for him? O judgement, thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason. 1 Shakespeare has Antony direct these words to the Roman public, from a forum in which they have gathered to hear the senator Brutus explain the reasons for Julius Caesar s assassination by the Roman senate. Brutus, like Antony, was a close friend of Caesar s. Unlike Antony, he was complicit in Caesar s murder. In the public outrage that follows Caesar s assassination, Brutus promises his fellow citizens that public reasons shall be rendered for Caesar s death. 2 In offering such public reasons, Brutus stays remarkably close to what contemporary political liberals would have considered public reasons suitable for political justification. He begins with an account of his private love and friendship for Caesar the man. However, Brutus quickly turns to defending the murder, claiming that his love for his country, his Roman pride and his firm belief that all Roman citizens ought to be free, compelled him to curtail the life of an ambitious man who sought to become an emperor and place all Romans in a position of 1 William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (III.ii ). 2 Ibid. (III.ii.8). 8

9 servitude. 3 Although privately facing a divided conscience, he acted by separating his private affections for Caesar from the political commitments shared by all Romans. Which Roman citizen would prefer slavery with Caesar on the throne, to the freedom promised by Caesar s death? 4 In Brutus view, Caesar died for the freedom of his country, a death Brutus himself is willing to die. 5 Brutus offers a justification which at first appears to appease the Roman public. Minutes thereafter, Brutus is forced to flee the capital. Antony takes the pulpit and reminds the Roman citizens how Caesar s conquests had filled the Roman treasury, 6 and how Caesar loved his fellow Romans. 7 He tells them that in his final testament, Caesar wrote that all his abundant lands should be used upon his death, for the common enjoyment of the Roman populace. 8 Holding up Caesar s bloodstained mantle, Antony describes in grisly detail the event of Caesar s murder. He shows the citizens where each of the noble senators had stabbed the dying Caesar 9 and coming upon the cut made by Brutus, Antony declares that it was Caesar s pain at his friend s betrayal, more so than any physical submission to the will of his killers, which finally burst his mighty heart. 10 The once pacified public, now moved to pity, is quickly incited to anger. Many modern day defenders of public reason would doubtless be moved to pity at Brutus plight. These defenders uphold the view that when justifying one s 3 Ibid. (III.ii.30 34). 4 Ibid. (III.ii.30). 5 Ibid. (III.ii.46 48). 6 Ibid. (III.ii.97). 7 Ibid. (III.ii.151). 8 Ibid. (III.ii ). 9 Ibid. (III.ii ). 10 Ibid. (III.ii.196). 9

10 political positions to one s fellow citizens, one must only appeal to those reasons that he or she believes one s fellow citizens will accept given their status as reasonable and rational citizens of a polity in which all citizens are free and equal. 11 Public reasons are those which appeal to political values and constitutional essentials, (e.g. to principles of justice, civil rights or processes of democratic institutions), 12 as well as those that derive from common sense and the findings of modern science. 13 In essence they are the shared reason of all citizens qua citizen. The qua citizen highlights the fact that public reasons are not exhaustive of all the reasons a citizen might have for supporting a particular policy. In addition to public reasons, a citizen might consider private reasons such as self-interest, and non-public reasons such as those found within his or her religious, philosophical or moral outlook, or taught by associations to which he or she belongs. However, it is understood that the actual process of justifying one s political position should exclude reasons which are not public. 14 In the scene from Julius Caesar just described, Brutus uses public reasons and only public reasons to defend his deeds as a Roman senator. Patriotism, Roman pride, and commitment to freedom ought to be public values that all Romans can embrace qua Roman citizen. From the liberal perspective, Antony appears to use all the wrong sorts of reasons. He appeals to the citizens self-interest by reminding them that Caesar filled the Roman treasury with his conquests. He then appeals to 11 John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 217; John Rawls, The Idea of Public Reason Revisited, The University of Chicago Law Review 64 (1997): , at p. 770; Samuel Freeman, Public Reason and Political Justifications, Fordham Law Review 72 (2003): , at pp and p Rawls, Political Liberalism, p Rawls, Political Liberalism, p Ibid. pp

11 their vanity and their admiration, hoping that Caesar s love and generosity will win their affections. Finally, by flourishing the mantle and painting a horrific picture of Caesar s death, he carefully goads and provokes them until they are inflamed by rage. In short, Antony is effective in persuading the Roman populace precisely because he does not use public reasons in justifying his position. This dissertation is by no means a defence of Antony s use of emotional and rhetorical devices in the public forum. However, it takes seriously an observation of Antony s that Brutus fails to recognize. Antony tells the Roman citizens, You are not wood, you are not stones, but men, and it is in their capacity as men that the Roman citizens are moved to anger and rage on Caesar s behalf. 15 Similarly, this dissertation argues that when justifying political positions in accordance with public reasons, individuals as well as political institutions do not fully appreciate the fact that the conscientious, sympathetic and responsible features of liberal citizenship ought to be built into a liberal account of public justification. The standard view of liberal public justification focuses on citizens as reasonable and rational agents who are unwilling to force fellow citizens to be subject to political powers regulated by other people s private beliefs. 16 Although conscientious, sympathetic and responsible agents would also hesitate to subject their fellow citizens in this way, they are individuals who wish to see the immense power of their political institutions directed towards ends which they not only find reasonable, but also noble, compassionate and indeed, right and good. They will be moved by such considerations in addition to concerns 15 Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, (III.ii.152). 16 Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp ,

12 of the reasonableness of public justification. This dissertation argues that they ought to be so moved. This dissertation offers a critique of pure public reason, but does so while defending the view that some form of public reason ought to serve as the normative criterion of political legitimacy. By pure public reason, I refer to a structure of public reason that is reflected in the standard Rawlsian account, along with some basic variations of liberal public justification which may be said to fall within the Rawlsian paradigm. In this paradigm, public reasons are those reasons which are in accordance with a political conception of justice that all citizens can endorse in their capacity as free and equal, reasonable and rational agents, engaged in fair social cooperation. 17 The political conception of justice is informed by the values inherent in the public democratic culture of a liberal society. 18 They include values like the liberty and equality of all citizens, toleration of an array of reasonable religious beliefs, and certain views on substantive justice (e.g. the wrongness of slavery.) 19 Public reasons include these public values, and in addition include appeals to the constitutional essentials and ideas of basic justice which a political conception of justice specifies as legitimate sources of collective power. 20 This dissertation argues that public reason, so conceived, is not sufficiently demanding. Far too many political positions become justifiable when public reasons are limited to those that stem from a political conception of justice. This leads to high levels of reasonable disagreement within political society. Reasonable disagreement 17 Ibid. pp. 137, Ibid. pp. 8, Ibid. 20 Ibid. pp. 137,

13 occurs when reasonable individuals disagree on certain political positions, but accept that those who disagree with them maintain a reasonable viewpoint. 21 Since a reasonable position with which a citizen disagrees is still reasonably justifiable to the citizen, many citizens become subject to laws with which they disagree on reasonable terms. By making public reason more demanding, there will exist fewer reasonable disagreements in the public sphere, thereby ensuring that fewer individuals are subject to laws with which they reasonably disagree. For example, consider a reasonable and rational citizen who is opposed to the death penalty on grounds that it is wrong to take a human life. By the standards of pure public reason, although it may be reasonable to oppose the death penalty, it is not a requirement of reason to be opposed to it. Reasonable individuals can disagree about the merits of capital punishment. Therefore, if an opponent of the death penalty lives in a polity where the death penalty is legitimate law, and yet she is offered public reasons as to why some reasonable individuals support the death penalty, then as far as pure public reason is concerned the death penalty has been reasonably justified to her. In order to make public reason more demanding, I will propose an alternate account of liberal citizenship. In this account citizens are free and equal, reasonable, rational, and sympathetic agents, engaged in fair social cooperation. This will make public reason more demanding because political positions which may be justifiable on traditional Rawlsian grounds may not be justifiable if citizens were to invoke other standards of evaluation. Suppose, for example, that the citizen opposed to the 21 Ibid. p

14 death penalty feels a kind of moral indignation when she learns of an instance of capital punishment. If liberal citizens are conceived as merely free and equal, reasonable and rational agents, then the moral indignation felt at the time of the execution will not contribute to concerns regarding its justifiability. If public reason could somehow demand that all citizens feel such moral indignation, even to a small degree, then citizens would have a publicly justifiable reason to oppose the death penalty on grounds of their moral indignation. This does not mean that they would agree with it. It simply means that they would understand why a reasonable person qua citizen could be strongly opposed to it on moral grounds. Furthermore, if supporters of the death penalty could be required to respond to such indignation in their public justifications, and reassure citizens who feel this indignation that their positions as free and equal, moral agents was respected while legitimating such a practice, then it would become far more difficult to offer public justifications in defence of the death penalty. In essence, this is what the faculty of sympathy contributes to processes of public decision-making. The view of sympathy I defend was developed by Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. 22 The faculty of sympathy enables a person to imaginatively project himself or herself into the shoes of another, to determine the appropriateness of the other person s response to a given situation. 23 This means that if a person is feeling moral indignation, his or her fellows can imaginatively project themselves into the situation of the person feeling indignation, to determine whether this is an appropriate response. While the measure of appropriateness can still be informed 22 Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. Knud Haakonssen (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press; 2002). 23 Ibid. I.i

15 by whether such feelings are reasonable or rational, they can also be measured along other domains, such as whether a person is justified in feeling such a response given his or her personal struggle in reaching a reflectively stable moral view point. Therefore, in lieu of pure public reason, I offer sympathetic public reason as the normative criterion of justification in the public sphere. However, I share several of Rawls moral commitments, such as the idea of political society as a fair system of cooperation, and the view that fair terms of cooperation reflect relations of reciprocity between citizens. 24 By adding the assumption that liberal citizens are essentially sympathetic agents, I aim to show that the Rawlsian paradigm is equipped to support a criterion of public justification that is more sensitive to citizens moral sensibilities. My account of sympathetic public reason is meant to revise the Rawlsian paradigm of public reason from within a Rawlsian perspective. Therefore, I will begin by explaining the moral foundations of pure public reason and then go on to outline the nature of my revisions. 0.1: The Moral Foundations of Pure Public Reason This Rawlsian paradigm which supports pure public reason is characterized by a contractualist moral grounding of public justification, 25 a cognitive account of public justification, 26 and what may be called a non-cognitive account of political 24 Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 49; Samuel Freeman, The Burdens of Public Justification, Politics, Philosophy and Economics 6 (2007): 5-43, at pp. 9 and Fred D Agostino, Some Modes of Public Justification, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 69 (1991): , at pp ; Freeman, Public Reason and Political Justifications, pp and pp

16 reasonableness. 27 (I will describe these features of public justification in the following section.) The need for public justification arises from the fact that liberal citizens are committed to ensuring that coercive political power reflects the collective power of the citizenry. 28 They uphold a principle of legitimacy that requires that the fundamental principles of justice, along with the constitution and the institutions of government, are justifiable to every reasonable citizen. 29 In Rawls well-known formulation, the liberal principle of legitimacy states that: our exercise of political power is proper and hence justifiable only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which all citizens may reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of principles and ideals acceptable to them as reasonable and rational. 30 The following is the standard argument against allowing non-public reasons, such as those from private morality, into processes of public justification. When citizens face complex ethical or metaphysical questions, they are required to form judgments by interpreting vague concepts, assessing complex evidence and making difficult practical decisions about the relative weights placed on conflicting reasons. 31 Given the complexity of coming to such judgments, reasonable individuals are likely to form judgments which conflict. Such conflict will occur even if reasonable citizens are asked to assess the same set of evidence, since each will weigh and interpret it 27 Freeman, Public Reason and Political Justifications, p. 2049; John Rawls, Reply to Habermas, The Journal of Philosophy, 92 (1995): at pp Rawls, Reply to Habermas, p Ibid. p. 136, Ibid. p Ibid. pp

17 differently. Given the diversity of personal experience found amongst those who live in liberal democracies, the evidence on metaphysical and moral questions will also be diverse, indicating even less possibility for agreement. Therefore, it must be accepted that reasonable people will disagree on questions regarding the requirements of morality. A reasonable citizen is someone who acknowledges these burdens of judgment placed on his or her fellows, and will be open to reasonable disagreement. 32 Citizens of a liberal polity must determine a way to enable justification despite such disagreement. Given the burdens of judgment, however, such justification will not succeed if citizens only use their non-public reasons when offering justifications. In consequence, reasonable citizens are those who take it as a part of their duty as citizens to justify their political positions not only by appealing to their own reasons, but also by appealing to public reasons that they believe others can accept. This duty is known as political liberalism s duty of civility. 33 One way citizens may fulfil their duty of civility is by adopting public reason as a common framework of justification. The duty of civility requires citizens to be able to explain to one another on those fundamental questions how the principles and policies they advocate and vote for can be supported by the political values of public reason. 34 Citizens accomplish this task when they (i) are ready to adopt and explain a criterion of justification which they believe other free and equal citizens can accept as a standard by which to 32 Ibid. pp Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. 217 and Ibid. pp. 217, 226, and

18 justify all political positions; 35 and (ii) when they appeal to values which they believe in good faith are acceptable to reasonable and rational citizens. 36 This does not mean that all reasonable citizens must agree with the content of the justification in order for it to fulfil the demands of civility. However, it does require the belief that other citizens will be able to see why the view is reasonable. 37 The duty of civility is a moral duty, not a legal duty. 38 Its defence requires a five step argument, which takes us across a broad spectrum of Rawls moral commitments for political liberalism. However, it is important to understand this defence of the duty of civility, as it illustrates the moral framework in which pure public reason is anchored. The first step is the idea of political society as a system of fair social cooperation amongst free and equal agents. Such cooperation consists in the set of rules and procedures that establish the terms of cooperation (i.e. what Rawls would call an articulation of the political conception of justice), 39 as wells as an ideal of reciprocity according to which all are willing to follow the rules of cooperation, if they believe others will as well. 40 Such an ideal is a necessary condition for cooperation to take place. Without it, members of a liberal society would not be able to engage in cooperation since in every instance of cooperation, rational citizens could face an unfair system of free-riding. 35 Ibid. p Ibid. p Ibid. p Ibid. p Ibid. p Ibid. pp. 16,

19 In order to see why this is the case, suppose that establishing a practice of taxation within a polity requires at least eighty per cent of citizens to be willing to pay taxes at any given time. The trouble comes in determining which of the twenty per cent of citizens could successfully evade taxation without harming political cooperation so far that a revenue system would not be established. If it were left to each citizen to determine whether he or she should evade taxes, then presumably all citizens would evade taxes knowing that everyone else was likely to do the same. However, if some political authority determined which citizens would be excused from tax payments, then those citizens forced to pay taxes would feel unfairly treated. Those not paying taxes could be said to be free-riding upon those who are. Due to these beliefs of unfair treatment, reasonable and rational agents would not freely enter into such cooperative enterprises. Therefore, given Rawls view of political society, every citizen must be committed to adopting the requirements of reciprocity, which include offering fair terms and following them if all others do. The second step establishes the two moral powers as preconditions for reciprocity. The two moral powers are a sense of justice which restrains individuals from free-riding upon others willingness to follow the rules, and a rational capacity to form, revise and pursue a conception of the good. 41 Both powers are necessary for social cooperation. If a person were rational, but did not possess a sense of justice, then she would certainly have incentives not to follow the terms of cooperation and not to fulfil the demands of reciprocity. As we have seen, the purpose of reciprocity is to enable citizens to overcome problems they would face if they were purely 41 Ibid. p

20 rational. This requires a sense of justice as fairness (i.e. the thought, if others have to follow the rules, then so must I. ) On the other hand, if citizens possessed a sense of justice but no rational conception of the good, their political conception of justice would be marked by impartiality, not reciprocity. Reciprocity differs from impartiality in that it promises citizens at least some degree of mutual advantage. 42 If the conception of the liberal citizen were of individuals without the rational moral powers, then the promise of mutual advantage would be unnecessary. Step three reflects the idea that political institutions must show restraint when subjecting citizens to coercive powers, in light of the two moral powers which reasonable citizens possess. Having moral powers gives citizens a status which Rawls maintains is analogous to the status of having natural rights. 43 There are different accounts of why moral personhood grants such status. Rawls own explanation is that having the moral powers is sufficient to affirm the principles of justice, and enter the original position. 44 The original position is a hypothetical situation that reflects conditions for fair political bargaining. 45 Those who possess the moral powers must therefore be treated like those who formed the initial agreement on the political conception of justice. It is in light of their hypothetical participation in the hypothetical agreement which requires treatment as equal citizens. 46 Moreover, 42 Ibid. p John Rawls, Theory of Justice (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 505fn. 44 Ibid p Ibid. pp Ibid. pp. 505; Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, ed. Erin Kelly (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University), p

21 citizens must be free in order to exercise their rational powers of pursuing a conception of the good. 47 One might find such an explanation problematic insofar as the necessary preconditions for forming an agreement (even a hypothetical one) in a pre-political setting, does not explain why these features ought to translate into political freedom and political equality as understood by civil rights and democratic values. After all, there are many theories of social contracts in which citizens alienate their natural liberty in order to reap the benefits of political society. Hobbes, 48 Spinoza 49 and some interpreters of Rousseau, 50 see citizens as being free in the state of nature, but subject to sovereign authority within the public sphere, without an account of civil rights as Rawls would imagine. Further explanation is required to complete the Rawlsian story as to why those who choose to engage in free and equal cooperation would expect to maintain this status during the cooperative enterprise. Other liberals have tried to supply such explanations. Charles Larmore, for example, offers one such explanation by utilizing a neo-kantian interpretation of the Rawlsian framework. 51 He argues that the requirement of political restraint comes from respecting the capacity for reasoning found in those with the two moral powers. Using coercive 47 Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, pp Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), Chapter Benedictus de Spinoza, Political Treatise, ed. R.H.M. Elwes (New York, NY: Cosimo Inc., 2005). On p. 302 Spinoza writes, We see then, that every citizen depends not on himself, but on the commonwealth, all whose commands he is bound to execute, and has no right to decide, what is equitable or iniquitous, just or unjust. But, on the contrary, as the body of the dominion should, so to speak, be guided by one mind, and consequently the will of the commonwealth must be taken to be the will of all; what the state decides to be just and good must be held to be so decided by every individual. And so, however iniquitous the subject may think the commonwealth's decisions, he is none the less bound to execute them. 50 J. W. Chapman, Rousseau: Totalitarian or Liberal (New York, NY: AMS Print, 1968). 51 Charles Larmore, The Autonomy of Morality (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp

22 force upon reasonable and rational agents without their consent would be treating them merely as means, as objects of coercion, and not also as ends, engaging directly their distinctive capacity as persons. 52 However, employing a Kantian argument is not necessary. The idea that citizens must all have civil liberties and political equality is so fundamental to political liberalism, that we may simply take it as a starting position. Step four of the defence of civility aims to determine a conception of the legitimate uses of coercive power that is compatible with the restraints that political institutions are required to show towards reasonable citizens, in light of their moral status. One way to do this would be to require that all legitimate uses of political power must emanate from the reasonable consensus of the citizenry. However, given that liberals acknowledge the burdens of judgment, they must also acknowledge the existence of a plurality of reasonable comprehensive doctrines, where a comprehensive doctrine articulates all the values (public, non-public and private) which a citizen might adopt. 53 It is consistent with liberalism to think of reasonable pluralism as a fact that must be accommodated in theories of legitimacy, in order to show respect for the free and equal status of all citizens of a liberal polity. 54 Reasonable philosophical and moral pluralism is a fact of liberal society in at least two ways. From the perspective of the individual, they reflect the burdens of judgment which individuals face when coming to reflectively stable attitudes on 52 Larmore, The Autonomy of Morality, p Rawls, Political Liberalism, p Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, MA and London, England: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 79; Larmore, The Autonomy of Morality, pp. 145 and

23 their moral and philosophical views. 55 However, reasonable pluralism may also be seen as a fact of free human reason itself. 56 When citizens are free to reflect and deliberate on their views, they will be able to accept that many different sorts of beliefs can be supported by common human reason. In this second view, pluralism demonstrates that the political institutions of liberal society are indeed the institutions of a free society, not an unfortunate condition of human life. 57 The more moral disagreement a liberal polity can accommodate while maintaining political stability and a general level of respect for the views of each citizen, the more liberals can be certain that citizens are free to form, revise and pursue their own conceptions of the good, and equal to all other citizens in such a pursuit. 58 Therefore, it is important to have a conception of legitimacy which is consonant with institutions that can nurture and sustain a plurality of moral and ethical viewpoints within their society. The way political liberals reconcile the conflicting objectives of reasonable consensus with reasonable disagreement is to mandate that all uses of political power are at least justifiable to all reasonable citizens. 59 This forms the essence of the liberal principle of legitimacy. It offers citizens a platform by which to subject their fellows to the coercive powers of institutions they support, while respecting their fellows as free and equal, reasonable and rational. One of the core concerns of Chapter 2 of this dissertation is the extent to which pure public reason achieves the 55 Rawls, Political Liberalism, Lecture 2, sec Ibid. p Ibid. p Ibid. pp Ibid. p

24 reconciliation of pluralism and consensus sought by the liberal principle of legitimacy. Finally, it is only when one accepts the necessity of the liberal principle of legitimacy that the moral force of the duty of civility becomes apparent. If citizens must seek to justify the coercive power of their political society on reasonable terms, they must be willing to justify their own positions to others, and they must do so on terms that other reasonable citizens can identify as good reasons for action. These terms serve as the content of pure public reasoning. They include constitutional essentials, the principles of justice and the political conception of justice. 60 The political conception of justice in turn, includes the basic institutions of political society and the correlative ethical principles and norms by which they are governed. 61 These principles and norms secure their normative force from the fact that public political culture already has at its disposal several democratic ideas and values that are shared by all citizens. 62 Rawls writes that his account of public reason (what I am calling pure public reason ) is public in three ways. It is public insofar as all citizens can access its content by appeal to a shared conception of justice (which includes democratic values and constitutional procedures). It is public insofar as its subject is the content of constitutional essentials and political justice. Finally it is public insofar as it is the reasoning which has normative authority in the public sphere. 63 Ultimately, then, the content of pure public reason will always be the values of public democratic culture. 60 Ibid. p Ibid. p Ibid. p Rawls, The Idea of Public Reason Revisited, p

25 This once again highlights the fact that public justification is justification to a citizen qua citizen and not to a citizen qua individual. An individual may or may not fully agree with every value of public democratic culture. A public value like freedom of expression or the right not to testify against one s spouse might be something that a citizen takes for granted as having normative force. Although a citizen may find these values reasonable, she may not have actually gone through the process of determining how precisely these rules fit into her private moral or philosophical views. This also means, however, that when a public value conflicts with a private belief, a reasonable justification will only be couched in terms of public values. For example, if a person were opposed to abortion on grounds that her moral beliefs led her to believe that abortion was murder, 64 then if there was public deliberation on whether or not to prohibit abortion, she could not appeal to her moral commitments as a reason to prohibit abortion. In fact, from the perspective of pure public reason, it would be unreasonable for this citizen to reject any justification supported by public reason, on grounds that it did not take into account the possibility that abortion was murder. She could argue that the practice of abortion showed a miserable lack of 64 I borrow the specific formulation of this example from Joseph Raz, Disagreement in Politics, The American Journal of Jurisprudence 24 (1998): 25-52, at p. 28. A similar formulation can be found in Gutmann and Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement, p. 74. In other variations of the problem, the pro-life position can be characterized in terms of respect for human life, (see Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 243fn,) as well as in terms of the constitutionally protected rights and interests of the foetus (see Ronald Dworkin, Freedom s Law: The Moral Reading of the American Constitution (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press), p. 85). The Rawlsian interpretation of the pro-life position invokes public reasons (such as respect for human life), while Dworkin s interpretation situates the abortion debate very naturally within the jurisdiction of non-cognitive political reasonableness, since the subject of governmental protections can only be examined from a suitably public perspective. Raz s formulation, however, tries to illustrate what sorts of non-public reasons are disqualified from public justification in accordance with pure public reason. This highlights the degree to which pure public reason is non-cognitivist. 25

26 respect for human life, 65 but the moral claim of the murderous nature of abortion would not be a suitable concern for public reason. In a critique of this view of public justification, Raz writes that reasonableness, or its absence, is measured by the content of the views held, not the rationality of holding them. 66 It is a critique in the sense that one is left to wonder whether the justificatory requirement has actually been fulfilled. In the case of our citizen with strong moral views against abortion, even if all she had been taught and had experienced in life made her believe that abortion was murderous, she would have to accept abortion as justifiable if it were sufficiently supported by public reasons. 67 This in short, is what is meant by political reasonableness being noncognitive. 68 No citizen needs to believe that a politically reasonable justification is justified from the perspective of his or her own psychology or capacity for rational evaluation. It is not reasonableness from the perspective of any given citizen. Rather, just as economists might conceptualize homo economicus to be a rational, utilitymaximizing agent, political liberals understand reasonable citizens as possessing political reasonableness; a kind of reasonableness that is reflected in the pure public reason of their particular polity. This derives from their conception as free and equal agents participating in social cooperation. 69 However, Rawlsians avoid this problem by offering a cognitive account of public justification itself. In a cognitive account of justification, a particular 65 Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 243fn. 66 Raz, Democracy and Disagreement, p Ibid. pp Freeman, Public Reason and Political Justifications, p Rawls, Political Liberalism, p

27 proposition is justifiable because an individual has reasons that necessitate her acceptance of the reasons given for justification. More precisely a public justification is cognitive when we hold that given a proposition P: [P] is publicly justified for A and for B when we have identified beliefs which mandate the acceptance of [P].(A and B accept [P] because doing so is demanded by their belief(s). 70 If P is in accord with political reasonableness, and the duty of civility demands that citizens be politically reasonable, and all reasonable and rational citizens have private reasons by which they can accept the duty of civility, then P must be publicly justified. This conveys a cognitive account of political reasonableness from the Rawlsian conception of a liberal citizen. Rawls can also guarantee that pure public reason meets the criteria of a cognitive account of public justification, given the beliefs of actual citizens. This is because a political conception of justice must be justified in accordance with three forms of justification, only one of which is public justification in accordance with political reasonableness. In addition, a conception of justice must be freestanding such that anyone who possesses common human reason can find it justifiable. The idea is that citizens of any liberal polity should be able to understand why the political conception of justice in all other liberal polities is reasonable, even if such conceptions are different from the conception of justice which they have experienced growing up. For example, although the constitution of the United States grants residual powers to states, while the constitution of Canada grants residual powers to the federal government, the citizens of the United States should be able to recognize the reasonableness of the Canadian constitution from the 70 D Agostino, Some Modes of Public Justification, p

28 perspective of common human reason, in a way that they would not be able to recognize the reasonableness of the justificatory criterion of say, the Spanish Inquisition. Rawls calls this sort of justification pro tanto justification. 71 In addition to political reasonableness and pro tanto justification from the perspective of common human reason, Rawls declares that political conceptions of justice must also undergo full justification. This occurs when all reasonable citizens can situate a political conception of justice within their reasonable comprehensive doctrine. 72 This does not mean that a political conception of justice must be acceptable from every reasonable perspective. Sometimes a citizen may be required to revise her private beliefs in order to accommodate the political conception of justice. If a political conception of justice has undergone full justification, then all citizens really do possess beliefs that cognitively justify any politically reasonable justification. This is because citizens have justified the political conception of justice, and pure public reason is embedded within this political conception. Therefore, in the case of the citizen who finds the practice of abortion murderous, a Rawlsian would argue that since this citizen (as a liberal citizen) believes in reasonable disagreement, and since she anchors political legitimacy in an ideal of reciprocity and fair social cooperation, and because the political conception of justice is fully justified, this citizen must also be committed to pure public reason as a shared criterion of justification. 73 When weighing her reasons for accepting a public justification against her private reasons for not accepting it, the citizen might 71 Rawls, Reply to Habermas, p Ibid. p Rawls, Political Liberalism, p

29 privately (and cognitively) believe the content of public justification is unjustified. However she is aware that the criterion used in this evaluation is her private moral perspective. At the same time, she is aware that there is another evaluative criterion which finds abortion justifiable, namely pure public reason. As a reasonable citizen who affirms a public conception of justice, she also believes that when weighing the two criteria against each other, it ought to be public reason which has normative authority in the public sphere and not her private moral doctrine. Moreover, she believes this both as a reasonable citizen and as a private citizen with the two moral powers. Rawlsians believe that this is what gives public reason its normative authority over non-public reasons when reasonable citizens are making political decisions. Samuel Freeman explains this authority of public reason as follows: [N]ot all reasonable people or reasonable comprehensive doctrines are always capable of accepting the politically reasonable resolution to constitutional disputes provided by public reason as informed by a political conception of justice. Is this a problem for Rawls? It will be a problem only if, as a result of their inability to accept the political resolution by public reason for one or more constitutional issues (e.g. regarding abortion), they are led to reject public reason itself in all other cases Freeman, Public Reason and Political Justifications, p

30 Finally acting in accordance with pure public reason reflects a contractualist account of moral motivation. Scanlon s well-known contractualist criterion of wrongness claims that an act is wrong if its performance under the circumstances would be disallowed by any set of principles for the general regulation of behaviour that no one could reasonably reject as a basis for informed, unforced general agreement. 75 According to Rawls, his account of political reasonableness shares the same psychological motivation as Scanlon s contractualist criterion. 76 This is the motivation that the individuals in question have a desire to live with others on terms that they could not reasonably reject insofar as they also are motivated by this ideal. 77 The five-step Rawlsian defence of the duty of civility establishes precisely this, although Rawls believes liberals can also build this desire into the psychology of a reasonable citizen. 78 The five step procedure shows that liberal legitimacy and the duty of civility are generated by citizens common objective of engaging in a cooperative enterprise with fellow citizens, while treating them as free and equal, reasonable and rational agents. The willingness to justify uses of political power to each other on reasonable terms and the willingness to resolve their political differences in a manner consonant with an ideal of reciprocity also reflects the mutual recognition by citizens of their free and equal status and their united cooperative enterprise of constructing a political society regulated by a public 75 T.M. Scanlon, What We Owe To Each Other (Cambridge, MA and London, UK: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1999), p. 153; T.M. Scanlon, Utilitarianism and Contractualism, in Utilitarianism and Beyond eds. Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 76 Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 49fn. 77 Scanlon, What We Owe To Each Other, p Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 49fn. 30

31 conception of justice. I will say more about this relationship in Chapter 6 of this dissertation. 0.2: An Overview of the Argument of the Dissertation In this dissertation, I argue that public reason in its standard Rawlsian form is too weak a criterion for justification. It holds positions justifiable that ought not to be publicly justified. It does so by not offering citizens engaged in public reasoning enough defeaters in their public deliberations. If someone holds the view P on grounds RA, a defeater is a reason RB which gives that person a reason not to hold P. 79 In order for RB to defeat RA, it must be the case that the person who holds RA actually also holds RB, that RA and RB are logically consistent with each other, and that the conjunction of RA and RB provide reason not to believe P. 80 The abortion example utilized by Rawls and Raz can show how such defeaters are meant to work in public reasoning. If a person is pro-choice on grounds that in the first trimester the equality of women is clearly a more significant concern than respect for the life of the foetus and the continuity of the political population, 81 then we could call the pro-choice stance P, and RA would be the greater weight placed on equality for women, than on respect for life and intergenerational political continuity. However, suppose modern science were to discover that foetuses have psychological capacities or biological functions much more akin to infants than we at first realized. Suppose this discovery suggests that foetuses might have interests that we originally would not have ascribed to them, and that it is reasonable 79 Gerald Gaus, The Order of Public Reason (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p Gaus, The Order of Public Reason, pp This is the argument Rawls provides in defence of abortion (Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 243fn). 31